many things

[Jyrki Vainio]

DAVID:

Most comic books in Finland use typed word balloons. At least the
Marvel books use a font bit like hand-lettering but the Duck 
books are done with regular typing. Personally I prefer ordinary
man-made lettering because I think it's an integral part of the 
art itself (so it's best when done by the artist himself). But
when used badly it can have dreadful results. I'm going a bit 
off-Disney here but I remember few years ago when a Finnish 
publisher started a new album-line their letterers were *less*
than capable for their jobs. The result was that the dialog was
so blurry it was hard to make anything out of it.
Again, I'm not saying that typing is better - when there's an
error in hand-written text it's easy to pass thinking "Errare
humanum est" but when there's a mistake in typed caption one can
more easily think that the book has been done in haste, without
giving much attention to the result. More than once have I seen
captions that have mysteriously switched places and that -
understandably - makes the following of the story much harder...
Can't remember that happening in the Duck stories, though.

GEIR & DAVID:

As Mikko and Mike (whose real name happens to be also Mikko) 
already told us Don visited Finland last weekend. It was also
mentioned that Don gave children a lesson in drawing Ducks.
He used a big flipboard and all the way thru he kept mentioning
that it wasn't the real way of drawing Ducks because he wasn't
able to use his engineer's tools for making perfect circles in
that size. Well anyways, he drew these gigantic pictures of
Donald, Scrooge, Lewey (yup, it was him - not any of his 
brothers) and Gladstone Gander and lectured all the way thru.
Then the audience kept demanding him to draw a picture of -
no other than - Mickey Mouse. And he did it! He said that
Mickey would be easier to draw for him (if he could use his
tools) because it consisted only of circles and ellipses -
it (I should really say he, shouldn't I?) consisted only of
circles and ellipses - and demanded no free-hand drawing
what-so-ever! When he signed the work he write at the bottom:
"I hate Mickey Mouse!" before quickly turning the next sheet...

DON:

In the story "the Guardians of.." there seems to be one thing
I just can't figure out... When the Spaniards were shipping the
books to their homeland Francis Drake attacked them, right? 
So why on earth a ship attacking another ship going from South
America to Spain would end up repairing its damages in THE WEST
COAST OF THE UNITED STATES??
And another thing... I know that you don't like talking about
the prices of your art but could you say how much they ended
up paying for that original cover of yours in the auction?

MIKE:

I guess the salmiac question of yours was meant only for the
non-Finnish members of the list..?

P.S. sorry about the spelling errors - I have to write this 
on-line and so I won't be able to go back to a line I've once
written... ;-)

				--- Jyrki Vainio ---